Three interesting phenomenon in poker

In any walk of life there are always unexplainable phenomenons -or at least inexplicable behaviors-and poker is no different. In this article I want to give you three of these instances where the vast majority of players are either unaware of the proper way to play in these scenarios, or the misinformation is almost taken as dogma.

• The game structure Part 1: Blinds

The blind structure used by a casino or online card-room can have a huge impact on how you should approach the game. I’ll use a typical game where the blind structure can actually vary quite a bit, a $5/$10 LIMIT Holdem game. Now obviously the big blind is always $5, but casinos vary between a $2 and a $3 small blind. And the adjustments needed go way beyond how tight you play from the small blind.

So, in a typical 10-handed game, players in the $3 small blind game will be paying $.80 per hand to play, while players in the $2 small blind game are paying a mere $.70 per hand - which doesn’t seem like much, but all things being equal after 100,000 hands the player in the smaller blind game will have saved $10,000!

Additionally, with less money invested, and less money in the pot, you need to win less money per hand to turn a profit. Because of this you can play tighter in the smaller blind structure, while people participating in the larger blind game should be playing looser (because of the extra money in the pot) but actually MUST play looser to overcome the added cost of the game.

• The game structure Part 2: The chips

One of the strangest things longtime poker players have come to realize is that the number of chips needed to place bets in the game. For example, in our $5/$10 game from above a player raising pre-flop would put in two Red Chips. Now, in a $4/$8 game at Foxwoods -where they use $2 chips-a raise pre-flop requires a player to use four chips. On the turn, a 3-bet requires the use 12 chips! Three players capping on the turn and river makes the pot almost a full rack of chips!

What this does is make the pot size “appear” larger, for the simple reason that there are more chips in the pot, and makes players more likely to stick around and chase a long-shot draw.

• A look at playing in KILL games

Now, a kill-game flies in the face of my first point: There is more money in the pot so it would seem you should play looser, but this isn’t the case. Actually in a $5/$10 Kill Game you get to play $10/$20 Holdem for just $7 or $8 a round, instead of the typical $15! So, you can actually play quite a bit tighter, especially when your opponents will mostly be playing looser -not to mention there are more chips in the pot so the pot appears larger.